A study about the cognitive factors that influence easiness of acquisition of sign language in children with disorders of language development.

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

It is generally agreed that sign language is easer to be learned for such as children with intellectual disability, autism, or developmental language disorders who are difficult in acquiring spoken language, as well as hearing impaired children. However, even those children with special needs often fail to master the sign language. The Sain Gengo is made of sign language so as to teach communicative means for those children, and is consisted of modified signs for the purpose of easier articulation.The aim of this study is to predict signs that are easy to be mastered for children with developmental language delay, based on the knowledge about the processes of memory and representation, and introduce these expressions into real communication intervention programs, evaluate and examine the results, and elucidate the relations between these variables and kinds or degrees of dysfunctions.Findings provided from this study may contribute to development of the Sain Gengo.During the first year … More I gathered data in the field of education to watch general trend without any experimental control, and analyzed them. Subjects were three boys and one girl with autism enrolled in lower secondary classes of a school for physically handicapped or mentally retarded children, one girl with mentally retardation and cerebral palsy enrolled in an elementary class of a school for physically handicapped or mentally retarded children, one 5 years old autistic boy enrolled in development consultation of a university. The teachers or student staffs of the subjects intervened by simultaneous use of Japanese Sign Language and speech.In the second year a severely retarded child with Down symdrome enrolled in an elementary class of a school for physically handicapped or mentally retarded was added newly, as well as the autistic preschooler mentioned above at the development consultation session of the university and similarly the student staffs intervened with simultaneous communication during free play session. The subjects did not acquire enough sign vocabularies to be able to achieve the original purpose, and problems in communication intervention were discussed. Practical use of these findings to communication interventions for the future is expected. Less